No calls for prosecution of US wars, invasions, bombings, covert violence in defenseless nations, only protests against mistaken government policies and claims that the citizenry is innocent. “Whoever, knowing an offense was committed, hinders or prevents apprehension, trial or punishment, is an accessory after the fact.” King held all citizens, including himself, responsible for US atrocity wars on three continents for investment.
This article will seek to clarify what has become obvious to its author for some time, namely, that the organized peace or antiwar movement, which has never forced a war to be ended, or prevented an announced war from happening, is not intended to to so. Worse, that it has operated overall in such a manner as to be flagrantly open to the charge that the whole peace movement in America has been been, and is, an accessory after the fact to US crimes against humanity, by making it appear that protests to one’s own elected and reelected war criminals will stop the killing abroad, so needed to maintain predatory overseas investments.
Fact 1. The American nation, or the government of the United States of America, with the support or acquiescence of most of its citizens, and in the name of all Americans, has been committing irrefutable crimes against humanity since the invasion of Korea. Even members of the imperialist establishment like Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul have repeatedly declared their illegality, unconstitutionality and criminality.
Fact 2. Within the US Anti-war movement there is no call for the prosecution of these mass homicidal crimes taking the lives of millions of innocent people in their own countries, as often as not in their very owns homes. (Noisy protest to their America’s own elected officials, yes, but no call for prosecution of any of these US crimes against humanity). Yet, America’s most published and most distinguished dissidents, like Prof. Noam Chomsky of MIT and former US Att. Gen. Ramsey Clark, have pointed out time and time again that these many US wars are crimes against humanity and prosecutable under Nuremberg Principles Laws in the universally signed on to United Nations Charter of 1945, and the The Kellogg-Brant Pact of 1928, thereafter known as The General Treaty for the Renunciation of War, The World Peace Act, both of which became an integral part of the US Constitution via the Constitution’s Article Six, upon being ratified by the US Senate. [1]
Quoting from the Text – USC Title 18 – CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE www.gpo.gov/fdsys/…/USCODE-2010-title18-partI-chap1-sec3.htm
“ACCESSORY AFTER THE FACT
Whoever, knowing that an offense has been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment, is an accessory after the fact; one who knowing a felony to have been committed by another, receives, relieves, comforts, or assists the felon in order to hinder the felon’s apprehension, trial, or punishment.“
and from The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia® Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/
– “An ACCESSORY, in criminal law, is a person who, though not present at the commission of a crime, becomes a participator in the crime either before or after the fact of commission.
– An Accessory after the fact is one who, having knowledge that a crime has been committed, aids, or attempts to aid, the criminal to escape apprehension.
– In a misdemeanor and in treason there is no distinction between principals and accessories.”
Your author notes,
Regarding Calling for a Partial Prosecution of a US Crime Against Humanity:
A good example would be calling for the prosecution of George Bush and a few of that presidents immediate top officials, but not his backers, secret accomplices and co-conspirators and those who carried out his criminal orders. (The town councils of Brattleboro and Marlboro, Vermont went further than calling for Bush’s prosecution.”Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for “crimes against our Constitution,” Reuters, 3/5/2008)
Calling for the prosecution of President Bush and a few of his top officials, might, upon investigation, be found intending to exonerate everyone else involved in the crime, especially when no prosecution is expected to happen as a result of the call. If on the other (unexpected) hand, prosecution took place, further court indictments might surely proceed therefrom. But, if as expected, no real prosecution is furthered by the call for the trial of Bush and a few associates, then the call might be suspected in purpose to relieve the conscience of those calling for selective prosecution, and to publicly downplay everyone else’s portion of complicity and involvement in the crime attributed to President Bush.
Again, calling for prosecution of a limited number of officials, prior to any prosecution of the crime itself, obviously does not absolve accessories after the fact of having hindered or prevented prosecution, arraignment or indictment of other people suspected of guilt that might proceed from the prosecution of the whole US crime against humanity.
In summation, calling for only the prosecution of a US President and a few close associates for war crimes a priori to a thorough investigation of either an established or suspected crime against humanity, besides being judgmental, no matter the popularity of the charge, could also be seen as an attempt to hinder prosecution of all accomplices above and below the president for the same crime against humanity.
An example of how politically motivated such selective calls for prosecution of individuals rather than the whole crime against humanity itself, is the fact that while President Bush is still being singled out, President Barack Obama has (with one yet little known wonderful exception*), been accused far far less, though both are widely considered to have ordered numerously the same homicidal crimes. For partisan political reasons, one was quickly targeted by many anti-war groups while the other was not. * (Elliot Adams, former President, Veterans For Peace, author of “The indictment of President Obama and all who follow his criminal orders“-read at the US Air Force Drone Base, Hancock, six times since April, 2011, for which he was each time arrested and charged.) [2]
With the reader’s indulgence, a personal experience:
In 2006, I attended the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration at Columbia University Law School and Riverside Church as a member of the organization Not in Our Name. At the time, I thought ‘Not in Our Name‘ was a terrific name for an antiwar group. But now, years later, I believe proclaiming ‘not in our name’ to be presumptuous and an impossible attempt to get out from under my share of collective responsibility for these crimes against humanity. The president, congress and media personalities continually solemnly pronounce these undeclared wars as being done in the name of all Americans and America. My proclaiming ‘not in my name’ sounds more like a wish than a reality.
Here is a major point your peoples historian would like to make as coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign:
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’ in his earth shaking sermon Beyond Vietnam, one year to the day before receiving a bullet to his brain, held America and all Americans responsible, including himself, for what he called “atrocity wars on three continents meant to maintain unjust predatory investments,” expressing anguish over his previous silence.[3]
Yet, almost with one voice, the secular antiwar movement has been telling the world that the citizens of America are innocent;
– even Americans pulling the triggers on people overseas;
– even voters who reelect the commander-in-chief who orders the triggers pulled;
– even the media anchors, commentators, editors, journalists, and reporters who tell the world the wars are good wars;
– even the leaders of organized clergy who call the wars just and bless the young soldiers shipping out;
– and though the wars are ascribed to the fault of America’s elected and reelected politicians, their fault is most often spoken of as one of mistaken policies. There is no wide calling them prosecutable crimes against humanity as were called the invasions and wars of Nazi Germany.
In both of his major sermons during the last twelve months of his life, Beyond Vietnam – a Time to Break Silence and Why I am Against the Vietnam War, King devoted half of his talks to reviewing the real and honest history of Vietnam and violent French and US colonialism on three continents, and King spoke directly to his audience and not to his government, which he dismissed as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”[3]
King did not place the blame on his government for the killing and destruction overseas that was at the same time “making social progress at home impossible for the expenditure of human and economic resources the wars consumed.”
No! King cried out in shame for his country, his America and himself, for allowing all this insane mass homicide when Americans are fully capable of making all this mayhem unacceptable and inoperable by non-participation.[3]
Though praise for King is everywhere, the antiwar movement is not following in King’s footsteps in accepting the responsibility for the atrocities both overt and covert as he described them.
King held his audience, and all Americans listening, responsible (always including himself). He cried out that everyone must protest and that silence is betrayal, but not that protesting meant transferring responsibility and making the government solely responsible for what all Americans were responsible for. King preached that we the people had the capability and choice of making the atrocities he chronicled unacceptable and inoperable “through conscienceous objection and non-participation.”[3]
With the exception of some religious peace committees, peace and justice groups, even famous antiwar organizations like Veterans For Peace that endorse the King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, with few exceptions, stick to blaming the government and not themselves for America’s wars for the sake of the investments of its businessmen.
Even more troublesome is the antiwar movement, as a whole, protecting our elected officials and their appointees and therefore the bankers behind them, by carefully refraining from calling for the prosecution of these innumerable US crimes against humanity! (- Ergo, the title of this article)
It would be helpful all around if readers, after checking the legal definition above, would consider whether or not they have been accessories after the fact to their nation’s crimes against humanity – not only American readers, but British and French and readers of nationalities of the rest of NATO nations.
Perhaps some readers from those poor countries invaded, bombed and otherwise attacked, would as well like to check their own personal history – wouldn’t want to seem selectively writing exclusively to citizens of predominately white populations (just because their leaders, in consensus, are still running and ruining the rest of the world).
Please remember, the only prosecutions of alleged crimes against humanity, since Germans and Japanese were indicted in 1945 have been against nationals of nations of the third world arraigned in courts constituted by NATO member nations. As a preposterous example: “International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda
Addressing the Security Council, today, 8/11/2012, called on Libya’s authorities to ensure that justice is served in relation to any crimes committed during the overthrow of the regime of former leader Muammar al-Qadhafi.”No mention at all in this skewered court that the government of the most prosperous and democratic nation in Africa, once occupied and plundered by Italy, Britain and France, was overthrown last year, and its revolutionary leader murdered, via US, British and French air and sea attacks. This is the kind of NATO crime against humanity that must not continue to escape prosecution.
In your author’s case, I know one hundred percent sure that I myself have been guilty of having been an accessory after the fact to US crimes against humanity. For until the recent creation of the campaign and educational website Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now a few months ago, I had not spoken up and called for their prosecution.
And this sad but productive admission is above and beyond the guilt I feel for having allowed my draft induction into the US Army while the massive bloody US invasion and bombing of Korea was still ongoing.
If this comes across to some readers as breast beating, I beg forgiveness. Am sure my four basic training buddies buried somewhere in North Korea and the lost loved ones of my Korean and Vietnam students and colleagues, many of whose resting places are equally unknown, are applauding my candidness from their unmarked graves.
Finally, it is to be expected, that if a slow thinking ordinary musician like myself has come to realize his having been unwittingly an accessory after the fact to his country’s crimes against humanity, how much more likely it is that others of swifter mind, insight, perception, and eminently more qualified, will not surpass my enthusiasm to lead the call for the prosecution of these horrific beyond imagination US crimes against humanity to take place just as those of another militaristic empire took place at Nuremberg.
